These Games We Play
by eccacia
Summary: All love is laced with poison. No one knows that better than they do. Savitar/Killer Frost. Partly based on the 3x22 extended promo. One-shot.


**Notes:** Um, so, the muse has been kind to me lately, so here's another Savitar/Killer Frost speculation fic, partly based on the 3x22 promo. I wanted to explore their dynamic even further, and expound on Savitar's motivation behind turning evil and all.

 **Warnings:** This is a lot darker than what I usually write, even compared to my other Savifrost fic. There's cursing, violence (although nothing that we're not used to on the show), and smut (like, in the first scene, so if that's not your thing, avert your eyes. If it is… er, read on. I'm not used to writing smut, but I hope it doesn't disappoint). If these might be triggering, please be kind to yourself and don't read this.

 **Soundtracks:** Largely inspired by "Gasoline" by Halsey, "Love Is a Losing Game" by Amy Winehouse, and "Circles" by Greta Svabo Bech. Give them a listen if you haven't already, they're wonderful.

* * *

 **i.**

 _Are you deranged like me? Are you strange like me?  
_ _Lighting matches just to swallow up the flame like me?  
_ _Do you call yourself a fucking hurricane like me?  
_ _Pointing fingers 'cause you'll never take the blame like me?_

— _**Halsey, "Gasoline"**_

* * *

Her back's chafing up against the rough concrete wall behind her, and his painful grip on her thighs are already leaving bruises, but she can't bring herself to care about those right now.

"Tell me how much you want it." His breath is hot in her ear. She can feel his smirk against her skin, his hand inching up the inside of her thigh. "Or do I have to make you beg?"

She makes a strangled noise when he brushes a thumb over the fabric covering her slit, already soaked with her arousal. They haven't even undressed yet—her coat and his jacket are on the floor, but her skirt's still bunched around her waist, and his pants are still on, unzipped—and already she is so close. She grits her teeth and digs her nails into his shoulders, wishing she could rip his shirt off and tear her nails down his well-muscled back. "You'll never— _ah_ —you'll never make me beg," she snaps back.

"Never?" he says, amused. His thumb traces lazy circles around her clit, and she arches into him, trying to grind into his hand, but he keeps to that agonizingly slow pace. She nearly whimpers in frustration. "Is that a challenge?" he continues, his lips now ghosting the smooth expanse of her neck.

"You're not"—she gasps when he slides a finger into her, and he bites down hard to leave a bruise on her neck, before soothing it with his burning tongue—"you're not up to the challenge."

"We'll see about that," he says with a dark smile. He slides another finger into her. Her entrance is so slick that it meets no resistance, and he begins pumping into her at a steady pace.

She shuts her eyes and digs her heels into his waist. "Faster," she says. "For fuck's sake—"

"Beg for it," he growls against her skin. He withdraws his fingers, but he thrusts his cock inside her with such force that her head slams back against the wall. He flicks her swollen clit with his thumb and it takes all her willpower not to come then and there. "Fuck, Princess. _Beg for it._ "

" _No_. Just—God, _move_ ," she demands, grinding her hips against his until he lets out a groan. She smirks, knowing that he won't last much longer, either.

"Not until you beg," he grits out. And then, with a glint in his eyes, he grasps her chin and he kisses her roughly. His mouth collides with hers; he thrusts his tongue in to plunder her mouth, he bites on her bottom lip until it's swollen and close to bleeding. The onslaught of heat from him, and the sheer force of the kiss, is blinding and intoxicating; she feels like she's been set on fire; his desire is raw, consuming, corrosive, and it proves too much for her to bear.

"Fuck me," she gasps into his mouth, yanking on his hair to break the kiss before she loses her mind. She gulps in greedy breaths of air and licks her lips, tasting the remnants of him in her mouth. "Come _on_. Fuck me."

He gives her a feral grin. "The magic word, Princess."

She digs her nails into his back. " _Please_ fuck me, you sick bastard—"

She hasn't even finished her sentence when he slams into her, increasing his rhythm until her toes curl and she throws her head back in a silent cry of ecstasy.

He comes not long after she does, his groans muffled in the side of her neck, his hot seed trickling down the inside of her thighs.

She slides down to the floor afterwards, trying to catch her breath, and he folds into a sitting position beside her, leaning back on his hands.

His flashes her a triumphant smirk. "I win, Princess."

She smoothens her skirt and flicks her hair back into place, gathering the sweaty strands away from her neck. "I told you not to call me that."

He snorts. "I have nothing else to call you."

"I don't either, but I don't give you a pet name."

He shrugs and zips up. "Call me God."

She scoffs. "Don't delude yourself."

"You're one to talk," he returns. "You call yourself Killer Frost, but you haven't killed anyone yet. Maybe I should test your limits again."

Her gaze darkens. "You almost killed me the last time you did."

" _I_ almost killedyou?" he laughs. "I stranded you in the middle of a feast. You were the one intent on killing yourself."

She doesn't respond. She remembers that incident well. It had happened a day after she'd failed to kill Tracy, when she'd almost depleted her energy reserves from fighting Flash and his team. He'd been disappointed, but he said he knew exactly what she needed. He'd brought her to a small factory in the outskirts of the city. It was an all-male factory. _At least fifty warm bodies_ , he'd said. _For your target practice. Or your next meal_ , _whichever strikes your fancy,_ he'd said. And then he'd left her to herself.

She'd already been weak then, nearly unable to stand from her battle with Vibe—she'd been unable to conjure a single icicle—so she'd decided that she would feed first.

But when she'd held the first man around the throat, smirking at the terror in his green eyes, she'd suddenly seen Barry Allen's face superimposed on his. _This isn't you, Cait_ , he'd said. _Don't do this._ _Underneath all that cold, you're still you._ She'd abruptly let go of the man, and as he'd scrambled away from her she'd tried to silence the voices in her head, but she'd started seeing more of her friends in the faces of the remaining men—Cisco, in the young man with the shoulder-length hair; HR, in the middle-aged man with blue eyes; Julian, in the man with blond hair; Wally, in the quiet young man with serious eyes. And their voices, ricocheting around the inside of her head— _Cait, please, you're my best friend. You can always come back. It's never too late. Please. Please. Please. We love you. Come home._

It had been Caitlin Snow's memories, she knew, from the last time she'd overcome Killer Frost. She'd been trying to fight her. She might have been weak with hunger, but Caitlin Snow was not; and for the brief moment that she'd been able to control over the body they shared, she'd handcuffed her wrist to a steel pipe.

 _I'd rather die,_ she had found herself thinking through the haze of delirium. It'd felt like it had come from her as much as it had come from Caitlin Snow. _Better me than them._

That was how Savitar had found her, wrist bleeding from the steel of the handcuff, half-deranged from hunger, paralyzed by the voices in her head.

"Pathetic," he says now, lips curling into a cruel smile. "Perhaps the name Caitlin suits you better than you realize."

She gives him a venomous glare. "Don't you _ever_ speak that name."

"How _did_ it feel like, Princess?" he continues, leaning forward. "We've never talked about it, have we? How did it feel like to be at the mercy of a mere slip of a girl? To be completely, utterly _powerless_?"

Her hands are balling into fists. "We've agreed to never mention the past."

"What did Caitlin Snow tell you? That they're going to take you back with open arms?" He smirks. "That they _love_ you?"

"Stop it," she hisses. Cold steam rises from the ground she's sitting on.

"Let me tell you something, Princess." His eyes are glittering with malice. "I know the past and I know the future, and I know that they only ever came to you when they needed you. I know that you contented yourself with whatever scraps of attention they gave you. They gave you a prison, and you thanked them like they'd given you a gift." He sneers. "Pathe—"

She slams her hand onto the ground, and an icicle spears him from behind.

He gasps and chokes. When she retracts the icicle, he coughs out blood.

It will take an hour for the flesh wound to close, and four or more for the collapsed lung to mend. In the meantime, he will feel like he is suffocating to death.

"You're forgetting that I am not her," she says coolly, although in the back of her mind, she can acknowledge that Caitlin Snow's medical knowledge has been useful to her yet again. "Now, _Barry_.What was it you told me when I first joined you? Wasn't it ' _Never speak of the past'_?"

He's glaring at her now, his breath ragged and stuttering, but he's unable to make a sound.

"I've abided by your rules," she continues. "I expect you to abide by them, too. I've never asked about your scar or your little vendetta, so from this point onward you'll never speak of Caitlin Snow again, either. Understood?"

She takes her coat from the floor. She brushes the dust from it and flares it around her shoulders in a flourish. "I'm going around the city," she tells him. "You are not to hunt me down, or I'll destroy both your lungs."

When his wounds close, he doesn't hunt her down. She regards him coolly when she returns, challenging him to hurt her, but he merely turns his back to her and leaves.

* * *

 **ii.**

 _He did not wear his scarlet coat,  
_ _For blood and wine are red,  
_ _And blood and wine were on his hands  
_ _When they found him with the dead,  
_ _The poor dead woman whom he loved,  
_ _And murdered in her bed. [ . . . ]_

 _For each man kills the thing he loves,  
_ _Yet each man does not die._

— _**Oscar Wilde, from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"**_

* * *

They find him.

He's made a slight miscalculation. He'd underestimated just how wily the team becomes under tremendous pressure, and now, they've managed to track him down.

But it doesn't matter. They're letting Iris walk to her grave, after all.

He watches the expression on their faces now. It's only Joe and Iris facing him, although he knows that Barry Allen lurking in the vicinity. He can almost imagine the conversation that took place. _Let us talk to him, Bar_ , they would have said. _Maybe we can reach him._

Fools, they all are. The future has been set in stone.

He smiles at their expressions. They're thinking they can save him. _Ridiculous._ Gods have no need for salvation. "Joe. Iris." Her name is like poison on his tongue. "I see Barry has told you about me."

"We want to talk to you," Joe begins, putting his hands up in surrender, as if to calm him down. "Whatever you're planning, please don't do it. You were my son once. Please, Barry—"

The name sets him on edge. _"That's not my name!"_ he growls, his shoulders tensing, his hands turning into fists in his pockets.

"I am not Barry Allen," he adds more evenly. "My name is Savitar."

But Joe is undeterred, and he takes another step forward. "Please. Tell us what happened to you. Let us help you, son."

That word is acid to him, and against his will it corrodes the walls around his memories—Barry's memories, memories of Joe taking him in very gently when his mother died, of Joe bringing him to ball games and watching every one of his quiz bees, of Joe bringing him back to his senses every time he'd doubted himself as The Flash. Memories of a time when he'd been cared for, cherished, _loved_.

And on the coattails of those memories are the uglier ones, memories from the future—Joe seeing him for the first time as a time remnant. Joe saying, "You're not the real Barry. What have you done to him?" Joe loading his gun, pointing it straight at him. Joe firing. The bite of the bullet on his shoulder. The smoke from the barrel of the gun.

"You're not my father," he grits out. "You've never been a father to me."

Joe's gaze falters. Iris puts a hand on the crook of his arm and turns to face him. "This isn't you, Bar. Please don't do this."

"Oh, but this _is_ me," he says. "This is me after you broke me." He gives her a twisted smile. He remembers the sting of her rejection across all the timelines he's been to, but the memory is but a phantom pain. He is immune to pain now. "Even now you refuse to see me as I am. Tell me, Iris, do you love people only if they're what you imagine them to be? You loved Barry Allen when he was human. You loved Barry Allen when he was a hero, even if he was a hero burdened by the world. But you can't love a broken Barry Allen. An _evil_ Barry Allen."

"That's not true," she says, her gaze fierce and unwavering. "I love all of you. _All_ versions of you. That's why we're here now, because we want to bring you back—"

He laughs. "Bring me back," he repeats. "Bring me back to what? To the light?" He takes a step towards her, and like the Iris he remembers, she does not shy away from him. She stands her ground. She looks him in the eye. She knows she will die by his hand, but even so she looks at him with the deluded certainty that he will yield before her.

"You know what I realized, Iris, over the centuries that I've been God?" he says, his voice dropping an octave. "God creates man in his image, and like God, man fashions other men in his own image. We only see what we want to see in the people we love. We are blind to what will hurt us. And you, Iris, fall prey to that human fault."

"I never said I wanted bring you to the light," she says softly. "I only want to bring you home." She takes a step closer to him. "I want you to come home to us as you are now."

His gaze darkens. "Never."

She searches his face. He remembers those eyes. He remembers the ghost of Barry Allen in him looking into them and thinking, _I'm in love with her. I will always love her_. _She's the light and love of my life_. _She is my world._ But when she will look at him in the future, she will say, "You're not the Barry Allen I know and love," and she will turn away from him, like all the others will; but it is her rejection that cuts the deepest. He had made her his light and love and life, and when she leaves, light and love and life leave with her, too. She will leave him a blind man in a labyrinth, she will leave him to descend into hell, and when he emerges from it he is never the same again.

She touches the scar on his face. "I see you as you are now, Savitar," she murmurs. "I'm sorry for whatever I've said to you, or whatever I will say to you. But time doesn't matter now. Only this moment does. And in this moment, I'm telling you that I love you. Barry or Bart or Savitar, past or present or future..." Her voice breaks. "In whatever form, I love you. In whatever timeline, I love you. In whatever life, I love you."

He knows those last three lines. He almost whispers them with her as she says them, because these are the lines she will tell him right before he kills her. Right before he watches the light leave her eyes. Right before she takes her last breath. He's seen himself kill her a thousand times. He's relieved it a thousand times.

He doesn't know why, in this moment, imagining her die by his hand makes him feel something akin to remorse.

But it lasts only a second, and in the next the steel returns to his eyes, the walls around his heart.

Iris must die, or he will never be born. It's the pinnacle of greed, but he isn't Barry Allen anymore; he thinks of no one but himself now, and he makes no apologies for it.

"Very touching." He grasps her hand in his and pulls it away from his face. "But love is just a memory to me now, Iris," he says, flashing her a cruel smile. "And soon you will be, too."

* * *

 **iii.**

 _For you I was a flame, love is a losing game  
_ _Five story fire as you came, love is a losing game  
_ _One I wished I never played, oh what a mess we made  
_ _And now the final frame, love is a losing game_

— _**Amy Winehouse, "Love Is a Losing Game"**_

* * *

She's leaning against the entrance when he returns. Her gaze is accusing.

"You still love Iris," she says.

He sweeps past her and ignores her.

She follows him. "I saw the look on your face when she touched you. You _wavered_. You said you don't feel pain, but you're lying—"

He slams her into a wall, his arm to her throat. The cold metal digs into the skin of her neck. "Never speak of the past," he growls.

She narrows her eyes at him and tightens her hands around his arm. Frost crawls into the fissures in his armor, biting into his skin; and when she twists her hands hairline cracks appear on the metal surface.

He snarls in fury and loosens his hold around her throat. When he does, she swings her legs up and kicks him on the chest, so hard that he loses his balance. He catches himself in time, but she falls into a heap on the floor, gasping for breath.

And then suddenly, she's laughing, a low, raspy sound. "This isn't the past anymore," she says. "This is the present—"

"This is all past to me!" he fumes. "There is nothing that I haven't already experienced—"

"Don't lie to me!" she hisses. "Don't fucking lie to me. You were surprised when they cornered us. You were surprised when Iris touched your face. When she said she loved you, your face changed." Her gaze is heavy with accusation. "You can't bring yourself to kill her, can you?"

"You weren't even supposed to be there," he spits out. He emerges from his armor. "You were supposed to be fighting Vibe, and then you were supposed to kill the girl."

"I did fight him, but he sent her away before I could knock him unconscious." She got to her feet. "You haven't answered me. Do you still love Iris?"

"What does it matter to you? Are you jealous, Princess?"

Now she throws her head back and laughs. "You're hilarious," she says, clutching her stomach. "You come face to face with Iris once and instantly you go soft. You can't even summon enough malice for your insults."

He glares at her. "This is none of your fucking business."

"Of course it's my fucking business," she snaps. "Because if you've had centuries of practice and you still haven't gotten rid of Barry Allen, what hope do I have of ever getting rid of Caitlin?"

"They're not real," he bites out. "Those memories and feelings aren't real. They're phantoms."

"Phantoms," she scoffs. "Phantoms that still haunt you, you mean?"

"Don't test me, Princess."

"And don't patronize me," she says. "You know what I heard back there, in your exchange with Iris? I wasn't hearing a God who'd transcended pain. I was hearing a man who's scared of being broken by the woman he loves." She gives him an icy look. "You don't fool me, Savitar. You're no God."

"Leave me," he says evenly, turning his back to her. "Leave this place now."

"You're a _coward,_ " she says with venom. "You can't even face the truth about yourself like a man—"

He lunges at her before she finishes speaking, and she falls face-down to the floor from the force of his blow.

He crouches beside her. "You want to know the truth, Princess?" he rasps in her ear, holding her face to the ground. His anger sparks electricity down his limbs, and his voice drips with acid. "The truth is that I am not a man. I am a phantom. I am a relic of Barry Allen's mistakes." He can see her digging her fingers into the ground. "I am not real, but the pain they inflict on me is."

Suddenly, sharp tendrils of ice burst out around him, and he's barely able to flash away before they pierce the place where his body was, but several nick his clothes and draw blood from his skin.

She props herself up and spits out the blood in her mouth. The scrapes on her face are already healing.

"So that's it," she says, smiling grimly. "You don't know how to deal with pain. The reason you want Iris dead is because she's the one who can hurt you the most. She holds the most power over you. If you kill her, you'll be free of any weakness."

He leans against a table. It seems that her persistence and their fight has worn him down. She can see from the slump of his shoulders that the adrenaline has fled his system, and he suddenly looks smaller in the dim light. "The reason I want Iris dead," he says, enunciating the words, "is because her death is the beginning of my ascension. Once I kill Iris, Barry Allen will kill me, and then he'll become me."

She raises her eyebrows. "Kill you?"

"One of the possible futures," he says. "Perhaps the most probable one, from what I've seen. After I kill Iris, and after Barry Allen kills me, the only thing that will stop him from becoming me is if he can save Caitlin Snow."

She strides towards him. "I won't become Caitlin Snow," she says, her voice hard and determined. "And you will not die. _You will not die._ I won't let it happen."

And then, for a brief moment, her eyes flash brown.

His gaze softens. His fingers curl around her chin. "Princess," he says, and the way it rolls off his tongue now sounds nearly affectionate. "We both know that there's more Caitlin Snow in you than we first thought."

"Nonsense."

"Tell me," he says, "did Caitlin Snow ever love Barry Allen?"

She looks away.

"I never loved any of them."

"That's not what I asked."

"I gave them everything," she continues, her eyes flashing brown again. "I stitched them back together each time. I listened patiently when _they_ told _me_ how hard it was to see me like this. I kept quiet when they didn't ask me about my pain. I didn't even nag so much anymore, even though I worried myself to shreds when they were out." Her breath hitches. "I gave them _everything_."

"And in return, they gave you a cage," he murmurs.

"A pretty cage, but still a cage." She leans in to his touch and her hand ghosts around her neck, where her necklace had been. "They said they loved me, but their love was a cage, too. Why did they do that?"

"Men want to contain what they fear," he says. "Especially if what they fear is a woman."

She huffs and rolls her eyes. "You men have fragile egos."

He lets out a gruff laugh, and she gives him a tentative smile.

She hasn't answered his question, he notices, but he knows it's one of those questions that he can never ask again if he wants to keep her by his side.

He tilts her face to the dim light of the room, and he notices that she is paler than usual. From her fight with Vibe, no doubt.

He runs a hand along her jaw, and rests it on the back of her neck.

"Hungry, Killer Frost?"

Her smile widens. "Mmm," she says, and he pulls her to him and dips his head to give her a kiss. It's entirely unlike their previous kisses—this kiss is tentative, leisurely, probing. He runs his fingers along her curls, licks the seam of her lips, savors the taste of her in his mouth.

When he pulls back, he subtly vibrates to restore heat to himself. He puts his hands around her waist and settles her on the table behind him, and then he gets down to his knees.

She gives him a bewildered look, but doesn't protest when he tears her underwear away and flashes her a wicked smile.

"For what I said about the factory incident," he says, and before she can understand what he means, his mouth is already on her clit and he's eating her out like a man starved. He's unbelievably skilled with his tongue. All she can do under his ministrations is scrape her nails down his scalp and dig her heels into his muscled back and whimper incoherently as he takes her to the height of pleasure.

When he's through with her and she's able to see straight again, she shoves him into a wall and palms the front of his pants. He's already hard, and his pupils are dilated in arousal.

She smiles. She gets down to her knees, and then runs her mouth over the tented fabric. "For the icicle to your lung," she says. "And to even the score."

She unzips his pants and takes him into her hot little mouth, and as she had been, he finds himself helpless and incoherent and completely surrendered to her.

 **. . .**

The next day, they carry on as if nothing had changed between them. After all, they never speak of the past—to them, there is only the present, and the agonizing, all-consuming hope for a future where they will no longer be shackled to their pasts.

But in their heart of hearts, they both know that that future is unlikely to happen. He knows enough of her to see that she is still Caitlin Snow, and she knows enough of him to see that he isn't trying to transcend pain—he's only running from it. And yet they hurl themselves towards that future as men and women hurl themselves at their burning houses, greedy to salvage whatever they can before the fire turns everything to ash.


End file.
